“Please!” I ran toward him, pointing at the water where I’d last seen Gus. “Gus is out there!”
In a flash Peter was in the lake, his strong arms pulling him toward the place where I’d pointed. I crouched into a ball and waited, tears streaming down my cheeks in torrents. I didn’t know if it was thirty minutes or thirty seconds later when Peter appeared at the surface, one of his arms hooked around Gus’s still body.
Moments later they were back onshore, and I rushed to my brother’s side, tears spilling out of my eyes and onto his limp little chest. I was still shrieking as I watched Peter perform CPR, over and over. But Gus wasn’t breathing.
“We need to get him to a hospital.” Peter’s voice was hoarse.
I barely remember leaving the beach or the drive to the hospital in Malone, thirty miles west of Chazy Lake. The rational part of me knew Gus was already dead, that a hospital could do nothing, but I must’ve been clinging to a measly shred of hope because when the doctors pronounced him dead on arrival, I went mad.
Libby tried to console me, but I pushed her away. I screamed into my hands until my throat was raw.
I couldn’t look at Libby. I hated her. I hated her for leaving Gus to die while she saved her son, who already knew how to swim. I tried not to listen as Libby explained through muffled sobs her version of what had happened, but I couldn’t block out the sound of her voice.
While she had been tending to the baby and I’d been off looking for Peter, the boys had wandered farther down the shore. Libby had been in a hysterical frenzy over the beesting, convinced that the baby was experiencing an allergic reaction, and hadn’t noticed the boys wade deeper into the lake from the other end of the beach. She hadn’t seen Gus remove his floaties. A few minutes later she heard the boys screaming, and when she looked up, she saw them out in the water, nearly halfway toward the trampoline, their small arms flailing. The waves were stronger than she’d realized and must’ve caused them to drift. Libby immediately stripped down to her bathing suit, left her daughter on the blanket, and plowed into the water toward the boys.
I listened to Libby explain to the doctors that though her son could swim at a base level, he’d never been in such deep water, and she’d found him completely panicked. Both boys were crying. At first, Libby tried to swim with one under each arm arm, but she couldn’t make any headway carrying two forty-pound five-year-olds in such wind, and they were both growing more and more hysterical.
I knew Libby well enough to know how she would justify the next part, and I didn’t need to hear it. I didn’t need to hear Libby defend her subconscious decision to save her own son’s life first. My blood boiled at what she omitted in her spiel to the doctors—that Nate, unlike Gus, was a capable swimmer. Despite being panicked, Nate could’ve gotten back to shore on his own. But with a mother such as Libby—overbearing, egocentric, high-handed, despicable Libby—Gus’s life never stood a chance against Nate’s.
Libby said her plan was to get her son safely to shore and then go back for Gus, but that when she saw me reappear, she was still in the water and knew I could get to Gus sooner. She explained to the doctors that she was preoccupied with Nate and hadn’t known I couldn’t swim.
“You knew,” I whispered through tears. “I told you.”
“What? No, of course I didn’t. I would have remembered something like that.” She reached for me and I flinched.
“In Bermuda,” I growled, anger creeping up through the grief. “I told you in Bermuda. You were drunk.”
Libby emitted an indiscernible sound. Her hand rose to cover her mouth, and she said nothing.
One of the doctors asked who Gus’s legal guardian was, and I held up a limp hand. He peered at me, unconvinced, and asked for my age.
“Seventeen. I turned seventeen today. Today’s my birthday.” I heard Libby choke back a sob, and I prayed it would suffocate her.
The doctor replied that seventeen wasn’t old enough to be someone’s legal guardian. “Is there anyone else we can call? Parents?”
“My mom’s dead. My father is on the road.”
“Where on the road? How can we get in touch with him?”
“You can’t.” I shrugged. “I don’t know where he is. Haven’t seen him since December.”
“I’m sorry.” The doctor sighed. He didn’t sound sorry. “What about relatives? Grandparents? Aunts or uncles?”
My head was dense with fog and pain, but I tried to think about whom I could call. My dad had run away from his parents when he was eighteen. They were somewhere in Canada, and I’d never met them. I didn’t know their names. My mom’s parents were both dead. Her sister was down in New Jersey, my aunt Mel, but I hadn’t seen her since the time we visited when I was six. I didn’t know her phone number, and even if I had, calling her would’ve been like calling a stranger.
“There’s no one,” I told the doctor.
“Let us help,” Libby begged, her voice squeaky. “Please, Heather.”
I shook my head. “You need to go. Please just get out of here.”
“Heather—”
“I want you to leave. Now.” I stared into her caramel eyes, red around the rims and sticky from crying. No part of me cared if I was hurting her. The only thing I knew was that if it hadn’t been for Libby’s selfishness—for her frantic preoccupation with a measly beesting, for her special treatment of her son over my brother, for her being too drunk and forgetful to remember my pivotal disclosure—Gus would still be alive.
“Heather, please—”
“Leave!” I screamed. I wanted to spit in her face, and I would’ve if multiple doctors and nurses hadn’t been staring at us. Nate started crying.
“Libby, come on.” Peter took hold of his wife’s elbow, his face colorless. “I’m so sorry, Heather.” It was barely a whisper. I watched him lead his family out of the stale, stuffy hospital where Gus lay dead.
My brother was dead. Never again would he open his curious green eyes or let out one of his high-pitched little Gus giggles or nuzzle his golden curls into my neck. My heart was frozen, my body numb. Uncontrollable tears dripped down my face and onto my lap.
A nurse approached me. “Is there really no one you want to call, honey?”
I wiped my cheeks and blinked, and there, in the well of my deepest, most unthinkable pain, was the only answer. “There is, actually.” I nodded. “There is one person.”
I called Burke. And he came running.
Part
TWO
Chapter Twenty-Five
Heather
Dear Dr. K,
I’ve determined that it should be my turn to do your little diary exercise, because the only way this couples therapy is going to help is if we both put in the work. Isn’t that what you said?
Besides, I could really use the journalistic release. The cathartic part is getting it all out, and then I’ll trash this document. For prime security, maybe I’ll even toss my laptop into the ocean, like the old lady does with the heart diamond at the end of Titanic. Gone forever.
First off let me just say, I don’t regret my actions. This wasn’t the original plan, but it had to be done. Soon enough you’ll understand that, too.